


the monsters aren't under the bed (they're on your shoulders)

by potstickermaster



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Lena-centric, a practice in grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 13:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18099014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potstickermaster/pseuds/potstickermaster
Summary: For underneath the armor of pencil skirts and blood red lip shades, Lena Luthor is of skin and bones and of fragile heart, defended by walls forged by fire and loneliness through the years.





	the monsters aren't under the bed (they're on your shoulders)

**Author's Note:**

> tw for allusions and references to eating disorders, abuse, bullying, and suicidal thoughts

They take away her mother’s lifeless body and four-year-old Lena could only watch. She doesn’t cry, doesn’t fully understand how her mother could tell her to be good one minute and the next she is sinking, sinking into deep lake water as Lena’s voice drowns in her throat, unable to scream for help. 

Her voice is nowhere to be found even when the men in uniform come. A kind woman with hair like an apple talks to her and asks her if she’s alright, asks where her father was. Lena could only blink, and the first words she finally manages to say are: “Where’s mom?” 

The woman only smiles at her, like she’s sad, and pulls her into a hug that felt like times when Lena’s mother would hold her and sing in her ear, then tells her  _ I’m sorry.  _

A man comes along and introduces himself as Lionel Luthor. Lena’s father, he says, and promises the young girl that she doesn’t have to be alone anymore. Lena believed him. When he takes her home to a house three hundred times bigger than the room she and her mother shared, she thought she wouldn’t find anyone, but Lionel leads her to a room where a tall, beautiful woman and a young boy played with a board and wooden pieces. 

The thing with childhood memories, no matter how much they take root in your mind, is that recalling them is much like holding onto sand. 

Down the line, she’d wonder if loss would always hurt like this. Memories are glass—fragile, and the jagged pieces cut like knives when Lena realizes she doesn’t remember what her mother looks like— _ looked  _ like—and a child should never have to suffer like this but she isn’t a child anymore, not after she stepped into the Luthor mansion, not with the expectations in Lillian’s eyes and the shoes she had to fill.

She doesn’t even notice it happening.

Lena is thirteen, the youngest freshman in the most prestigious high school in  Metropolis. She hears a snicker and an offhand comment by one of the senior cheerleaders how  _ she could use some diet or seven but no make-over can save that poor girl, _ followed by a series of laughs. She ignores it, until much later when she’s finally home and she walks to her bedroom to change into something more comfortable. She passes by her reflection on the mirror, pauses to stare, and wonders what the cheerleaders saw. She’s of average height, maybe a little above average on weight, but that’s it. Nothing to need a diet for, right?

She notices how much sweets and nuts she consumes when she studies late at night. For brainpower. Always that. She can never be the daughter Lillian wanted if she is anything less of a genius, after all.  The voices of the cheerleaders echo in her head, and for the first time, she sticks with water to keep her going until four in the morning in preparation for her advanced placement exams. 

"Do you think I'm fat?" Lena asks Lex one time. She has passed out in class once and it’s one time more than she should have, because the school had to call Lillian and the fury in her eyes. But Lex, he understands, right? He’s much older and no longer the brother she was close to but his words matter to her just as she matters to him, and so when Lex shakes his head and says Lena’s just fine, the younger Luthor smiles. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, you crazy duck,” Lex says, patting Lena’s head. “You be good, okay?”

When tomorrow comes, Lena has to watch fire and rubble on the news during lunch at school. Her brother’s name is thrown about, his face plastered all over everything, a news clip of him being dragged out of wherever he was hiding playing over and over again on the televisions in the cafeteria and the hallways.  The cheerleaders and jocks and teachers look at Lena like she’s crazy like her brother, and Lena wonders if she was imagining things, because that man was not Lex. That man on the television with hatred in his eyes was not her brother.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and he lied about it. Lena hides away in the comfort of the library until the dust and whispers that day settles, and goes home to find Lillian cleaning their home like madness hasn’t taken her own flesh and blood, like he didn’t take the life of many others. Lionel breaks his promise.

So she grieves on her own, makes rain clouds of her pillows, and thinks the ache in her belly isn’t hunger but sadness chipping away at her being. 

Down the line, she’d wonder if loss would always hurt like this. Her mind is glass—fragile, and the jagged pieces cut like knives when Lena realizes she isn’t sure if Lionel telling her she would never be alone was a memory or an imagined one, and if Lex really did tell her she would see him the next day. 

“You need to get out more,” Lillian says casually over dinner. Lena pauses over a bite of chicken to look over at her stepmother. “You always lock yourself in your room. Get some sun, go run or something.” 

It’s been years but she remembers what the cheerleaders say—her mind is glass and even the darkness filters past like light—and what she understands from Lillian’s words were that she could use  _ some diet or seven _ and maybe a 100-mile run. 

Lena nods dutifully, finishes her dinner, then excuses herself to her room. When everyone falls asleep in the Luthor mansion—Lillian and the staff who take care of everything abandoned in that mansion save for Lena—she sneaks out, runs until she couldn’t feel her legs anymore, and walks home before anyone noticed she was gone.

No one notices.

The cheerleaders don’t talk about her anymore; or at least, she doesn’t hear them talk about her anymore, but they still look at her like she has grown three sizes bigger despite the hunger in her belly and the burn in her legs. And maybe she has. Her legs feel heavy most of the time but she isn’t entirely sure. The mirror in her room is gone, Lionel is gone, Lex is gone, and all that is left is Lillian’s silence, the hefty dinners the cook whips up every single night, and the burn in her eyes and legs when she runs, runs, runs until nothing else mattered.

No one notices.

Until Jack, at least.

He was a nice guy, in the way guys are actually nice: he listens when she speaks and lets her finish her lengthy rambles and theories with a fond smile on his face, like he cares

Like Lena matters.

So maybe it was inevitable for Lena to fall in love with him. He was nice after all, in a way that made her heart flutter and her stomach do weird flips, and though she felt like there was a certain piece missing when they kiss, he was there for her. And for a girl who has hungered for things far beyond what food can give, it’s enough. 

When she leaves him to take over her brother’s company—for Lex, for Lionel, for  _ Lillian— _ the certain piece missing is a hole that every lonely day chips at, until there is nothing in her chest but work and whiskey and the silence of the hotel room she has rented because what’s the point of getting an apartment if she can’t make a home of it? 

Sunshine greets her one day in the form of a blonde who’s name is Kara Danvers, and Lena feels the weird flutter in her hollow chest for the first time in years. Kara smiles at her like  _ she matters  _ and she wonders what this woman sees, but she can’t ask and she doesn’t know how to find out because there are no mirrors in her bedroom. 

She visits again, in the guise of work. She makes Lena laugh. Lena has forgotten what happiness feels because work and whiskey built a home in her soul, and so when potstickers and musicals start to burrow in her being, Lena is more than shaken. She lets herself be; Kara is an anchor and a lighthouse in a stormy sea and Lena wonders if she finally found the certain piece missing all these years.

When Jack’s lifeless body collapses in front of her, all Lena could see is darkness. There is water in her ears, no air in her lungs, and she remembers how Lionel left one day and came back in a coffin, cold, dead, remembers all the bodies on the television when Lex sunk to the lowest of low, and here, against her trembling hands, is Jack’s own, body draining of his warmth. She loved him once upon a time and she knows a part of her would always will—he cared for her and in her own ways she cared for him, before all of this. 

It’s funny, how Lena never truly cares, and yet the very second she does, those she loves vanish like it’s her curse to be alone. 

She doesn’t remember what happens. She feels cold and calm, like the way her stepmother had been when Lex was arrested. It feels slightly better, when she thinks of Beth dying in jail—a painful death is of what she thinks of, maybe of Lena watching her writhe in agony as life slowly drains away from her body until she lays lifeless in front of her like Jack did.

She wonders if loss would always hurt like this. She is glass—fragile with cracks all over her being where loss had struck. The crack from when her mother died when she was four is there, unable to heal itself, and loss continues to chip it away, letting the crack grow, and Lena could only watch. Lex. Lionel. Jack. 

“You’re not going to lose me,” Kara says, and she holds Lena like she matters and it takes all of Lena not to break down. There isn’t much left of her. She wants to laugh.

“I think I ever feel things again, I’m going to be very, very afraid of the person I might be.”

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Kara whispers. She holds Lena like she matters and Lena never quite believed in higher beings but she prays she does. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Lena scoffs. “Promise?”

“I will always be your friend,” Kara says. It strikes the crack in Lena’s soul and heals her all at the same. “And I will always protect you. I promise.”

Kara is there, that night, holding her like she matters, and for the first time the silence is bearable.  

No one notices. Not even Lena herself. Kara becomes her everything, and one shouldn’t have that much power, really, but Lena is alone and lonely and despite the secrets she knows Kara keeps, she trusts her wholly and believes every word from her lips even when Lena knows she is lying. Kara matters to her, after all.

And so when Kara falls in love with Mike, Lena settles into the silence. She finds acceptance in a mother figure she never thought she’d have, and Lena trusts her wholly. She’s lost those who believed in her, her mother, Lex, Jack, Kara, god,  _ Kara,  _ but she has Rhea.

“Whatever happens next, I want you to remember never to doubt yourself again,” Rhea says. “You are a marvel, Lena. Any mother should be proud to call you daughter.”

So it shatters Lena when everything blows up right in her face. When everything is over and done and Supergirl and Earth had sacrificed everything for something Lena did, she understands that the harrowing ache in her chest and the axe to the glass that is her being is necessary.

“I taught you to be a scientist, to question everything,” Lillian says.

“No. You taught me to doubt myself,” Lena shoots back, blood and whiskey on her tongue and weariness in her very soul. “To seek validation elsewhere, so much so that I took it from the first mentor that offered it to me.”

And Lillian, her mother, tells her that Lena would have been enough, and yet every time she had to choose Lena or something else, she’d chosen the latter.

She feels weary. 

When the dust of the Daxamite invasion settles, Lena dwells into the silence, at least until sadness finds its way in her sunshine’s eyes and she returns to work and whiskey to bring the light back in blue. Lena  _ knows,  _ but she understands the need for secrets or perhaps the lack of trust in a woman who bears the Luthor name. Loss chips away at her as Kara grieves, but Lena understands. 

Lena never liked the silence. 

Through the months, the silence has been company along with work and whiskey and the thoughts that eat away at her mind of glass. Though she and Kara retrace their steps into a sort of friendship, there is something between them that Lena can’t point out, and it’s this fear of the unknown that keeps her six feet away from her blonde best friend. 

But Kara talks to her again, holds her again like she matters, and maybe this time it’s for good. They work together and Kara introduces her to every aspect of her life except for that caped secret, but Lena is happy. Happy enough with Kara like this.

Happy enough.

Happy enough with Kara that when she suggests Lena date James, Lena could only laugh in disbelief. And yet days later she is out for brunch with him, and the next thing she knows she has projected feelings she did not have onto one James Olsen despite the grief chipping away at her chest. 

She is happy enough. He makes her laugh sometimes, and he’s not soft like Kara but he’s strong, not as warm as Kara but warm enough. He’s not Kara, but Kara wanted him for her and maybe, just maybe, it’s enough. She doesn’t know. There is only silence from Kara.

It’s only silence she has when she breaks up with James and kicks her out of her car. The one person she thought would support her, now walking away from her car and away from her life. Her hand, her heart, her entire being itches to call Kara, to tell her what happened, to ask for her company, to beg for what was theirs before the rift had divided them. 

She still doesn’t know what she has done. She fears she might never know. 

She wonders if loss would always hurt like this. 

It’s in silence that she spends the next days, the next weeks, in an DEO lab, and despite Eve’s chatter and the agents’ whispers of  _ she’s a Luthor, she’s a Luthor,  _ there is only silence as she drowns herself in work and the hidden whiskey in a flask that Director Danvers notices more than once. She doesn’t tell Colonel Haley and doesn’t call Lena out on it. 

When Kara finally breaks the silence, loss is a snap away from shattering Lena completely despite the walls forged by fire and loneliness through the years. She wants to think she feels cold and calm like how loss has left her and still,  _ and still,  _ hope finds its way in her weary heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, and she holds Lena like she matters, like she is all that matters, and Lena finally breaks. Kara is there to hold her though, like she promised—she had forgotten, some days in between, but she’s here like she promised. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me most. I’m sorry—”

And love, well, love is a funny thing. For all of Lena’s weariness and the tears in her eyes, hope finds home anew in her chest as Kara holds her like her touch is key to life itself. Kara makes her heart flutter and her stomach do weird flips, and when Lena kisses her for the first time, she kisses sunshine; no missing piece, no secrets, no uncertainty, and though loss has left her empty and hungry for so long, Kara holds her like home. 

“You are my beloved,” Kara whispers, “so let me love you for the rest of our years, to make up for the ones we missed.” 

Lena wonders if love would always feel like this. 

  
  
  


It does.

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed, unread, but catharsis was much needed. sorry


End file.
